1. Field
The present invention relates generally to the distribution of environmental condition information to vehicles, and particularly, the distribution of real-time and site-specific alert information.
2. Description of the Related Art
The importance of weather reporting and forecasting in our daily lives cannot be contested. A large percentage of the people in the United States watch their local evening news on a nightly basis to see the local weather report and forecast. This information may then used to make decisions regarding what to wear, what to do, and, in travel, where and when it is safe to travel. Under certain circumstances, such as in the case of severe weather, some people may find themselves in situations where they are making life and death decisions based upon the weather information they have available to them.
This information is particularly important to travelers on the road, on the water or in the air. Severe weather may arise abruptly, giving the traveler very little warning and few options for safe travel. For cars and trucks, road conditions change as a result of weather events such as rain or sleet.
Travelers may obtain weather data reported by television stations or networks prior to their journeys and plan accordingly. Local television stations, as well as the national networks, obtain weather data from the National Weather Service (NWS) which maintains a network of radar installations located at approximately one hundred thirty-eight sites throughout the United States. Observers at each of these installations monitor the weather conditions within their area and provide hourly teletyped messages to subscribers, typically through a third party weather service provider such as GTE Contel, a subsidiary of GTE Government Systems. In addition, other services provide lightning strike information on a subscription basis, such as through Global Atmospherics, Arizona, U.S.A.
The weather information provided by any one or a combination of the above services may be synthesized at a local television station into an understandable format for presentation to the public. In general, the meteorological data is gathered at the local television station and combined with image maps of a geographical region to generate a weather image, i.e., a graphical illustration of the weather. In addition, the local temperatures for various communities or cities within the viewing area of the station may also be generated on the weather image. A sequence of these composite weather images can be looped to create weather animation. The local television station may then broadcast the weather images to viewers.
Although the current weather reporting and forecasting systems used by television stations and networks have much benefit, they may not provide relevant weather information during severe weather, or when weather manifests differently than forecasts. In such circumstances the weather forecasts obtained prior to traveling are rendered useless. This is particularly true when it comes to the existence of severe weather which arises quickly without much warning, as is often the case with tornadoes. It is well known that tornadoes and other types of severe weather can strike quickly without much prior notice. The information provided by the television stations and networks regarding these types of severe weather are seldom provided in a real-time fashion and are generally not detailed as to the specific location or direction of the weather front. Therefore, travelers are often not given sufficient warning to adequately prepare for the weather in order to protect their property or find a safe refuge for themselves.
Travelers may obtain weather warnings from a radio broadcast from a car radio, if the radio is on and tuned to the proper station. Moreover, the weather information that is provided is often provided on a county wide basis which, depending on the size of the county, the actual path of the severe weather through a county, and the position of the listeners within the county, may be irrelevant.
An alternative source of weather information is through weather radios such as the Realistic Weather Radio Alert III, Model No. 12-140, distributed through “Radio Shack,” a division of the Tandy Corporation. In general, weather radios may provide listeners with prerecorded or live weather updates on an essentially continuous basis. The weather radios receive the weather information updates which are broadcasts by the national Weather Service (NWS) from local transmitters using specific frequencies designated by the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). The weather updates usually comprise regular weather information which is prerecorded and then broadcast, except for the issuance of severe weather watches or warnings. In those cases, a prerecorded (or sometimes live) watch or warning message is preceded by a tone (e.g., a 1,000 cycle tone) that is manually activated at the broadcast station. The tone weather radios that are turned on and within the range of the broadcasted signal may receive the tone which activates an audible alarm on the radio. The audible alarm is typically not distinctive as to whether it represents a watch and warning, nor does the audible alarm indicate the type or severity of the severe weather. The alarm will usually continue until the user pushes an alert key or button on the weather radio. It is noted that NWS personnel are responsible for both manually recording of the audio messages for broadcast and the manually activating of the tone. However, most automobiles are not equipped with such devices.
Real-time, site-specific distribution of weather information has been described previously in co-owned U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,018,699, issued Jan. 25, 2000; 6,275,774, issued Aug. 21, 2001; 6,493,633, issued Dec. 10, 2002; and 6,490,525, issued Dec. 3, 2002. Those references teach a remote unit that receives information from the distribution network and provides an alert to the user. In some embodiments, the remote units are mobile units and provided with some programming to allow the remote unit to determine based upon input from a global positioning system (GPS) whether information is relevant to it. Weather data is received by a server system which encodes the data into a database in the form of a grid where grid cells are associated with geographic areas. This database is transmitted over a distribution network which could be over a cellular network, a land line network, a satellite network or any combination thereof, where eventually it is received by the remote units which decode the data. In some embodiments, remote units may include programming that allows the remote unit to interpret and display data. Such systems find use with emergency response personnel and similar organizations that may be able to afford such equipment.
Such remote units might be costly and complex for use in cars owned and operated by the average consumer. Nevertheless, drivers on the road still need the information while they are traveling. Moreover, because of the need to focus one's attention on the road, the information presented to the driver must be succinct and provide the driver with only the information he or she needs. In other words, the system must alert the driver to conditions and require the driver to perform any interpretation of data. To solve this problem, remote units are designed to perform some, if not all, of the weather interpretation functions to display and alert the user in the most concise manner possible, either through visual or aural cues. This requires a complex device to enable the remote unit to perform this function.
There are vehicles being marketed today that are equipped with GPS-responsive navigation systems. Such systems provide geo-location information as well is vehicle motion data. Vehicles are also being marketed with satellite radio receivers that allow users to receive signals distributed by a satellite distribution network. A system may be implemented which integrates these two systems and provides real-time, site-specific alerts to travelers, while at the same time avoiding cost and complexity of more robust weather messaging systems. Such a system could be also be achieved by integrating a suitably enabled stand-alone device with existing navigation and satellite radio systems.